Writing. Depressing things.
I almost started crying at work just now and had to step away from reading my f-list. Let me explain.
Over three years ago I made the super important decision to go back to school and finish my BA. I had lost my day job with no others in sight. I felt like it was something I needed to do for my future and financial security. Then I finished that, and made the hard choice to do another year+ of school to get my Masters, because in order to go into teaching, I need one. I did these things. I am done, I have my MATLT. And I don't regret it, exactly, but I resent the hell out it.
Allow me to explain: I used to write ALL THE TIME. I wrote fic. I wrote books. I wrote every day. I wrote a book you all might remember about telepathic space pirates that garnered me a really awesome phone conversation with an agent who read the whole thing, and gave me invaluable feedback about hoe to make it better. I had another story I wrote rejected, but with a wonderful personal letter from the editor asking me to expand it into a full length book. I feel like I made this choice about my financial future at a critical moment in my writing career, if you want to call it that. School happened, and it demanded so much reading and well, academic writing time that I just didn't have the energy left over to write creatively. I barely had time to read anything. I kept telling myself "When school is done". Well, it is, and I still haven't picked up the gauntlet again.
I read about friends of mine, writers doing the things I used to do - finishing books, querying agents, working on things - and something inside me breaks a little bit. I mean, I'm happy for them, I am. But I just seem to sink deeper into my own personal writing depression. I miss it SO MUCH. So why am I not doing it? Why haven't I picked up that pen again and started being creative?
Honestly? I'm scared. I am terrified in some deep part of myself that I've somehow "lost it". That in the three years of academic writing, my ability as a fiction writer has somehow vanished. While I might be a tad rusty, I know logically that that is ridiculous, and that if I just do it, I will soon be churning out words and characters and stories to the level I was at previously. But the fear is paralyzing in a way that I cannot explain. I WANT to write, but forcing myself to actually do it is proving to be this huge hurtle I never thought I would EVER have to overcome.
The longer this goes on, the worse it is. Fandom and fic writing helped me get back into writing the last time I experienced an issue kind of like this. But it wasn't this...much. It wasn't as intense, and hadn't gone on for as long. I know the answer: write, stupid. But I am really, really struggling with how to make myself just move past the fear and do it. And in the meantime, I am almost crying when I read about how happy writerly friends are, or the strides they are making in their own writing.
This can't continue. I have to do something to move forward. But fandom isn't what it once was, and I don't know if writing fic will give me back my confidence the way it once did. I am sad, and afraid, and I don't know what to do to kick myself in the rear and move forward.
Over three years ago I made the super important decision to go back to school and finish my BA. I had lost my day job with no others in sight. I felt like it was something I needed to do for my future and financial security. Then I finished that, and made the hard choice to do another year+ of school to get my Masters, because in order to go into teaching, I need one. I did these things. I am done, I have my MATLT. And I don't regret it, exactly, but I resent the hell out it.
Allow me to explain: I used to write ALL THE TIME. I wrote fic. I wrote books. I wrote every day. I wrote a book you all might remember about telepathic space pirates that garnered me a really awesome phone conversation with an agent who read the whole thing, and gave me invaluable feedback about hoe to make it better. I had another story I wrote rejected, but with a wonderful personal letter from the editor asking me to expand it into a full length book. I feel like I made this choice about my financial future at a critical moment in my writing career, if you want to call it that. School happened, and it demanded so much reading and well, academic writing time that I just didn't have the energy left over to write creatively. I barely had time to read anything. I kept telling myself "When school is done". Well, it is, and I still haven't picked up the gauntlet again.
I read about friends of mine, writers doing the things I used to do - finishing books, querying agents, working on things - and something inside me breaks a little bit. I mean, I'm happy for them, I am. But I just seem to sink deeper into my own personal writing depression. I miss it SO MUCH. So why am I not doing it? Why haven't I picked up that pen again and started being creative?
Honestly? I'm scared. I am terrified in some deep part of myself that I've somehow "lost it". That in the three years of academic writing, my ability as a fiction writer has somehow vanished. While I might be a tad rusty, I know logically that that is ridiculous, and that if I just do it, I will soon be churning out words and characters and stories to the level I was at previously. But the fear is paralyzing in a way that I cannot explain. I WANT to write, but forcing myself to actually do it is proving to be this huge hurtle I never thought I would EVER have to overcome.
The longer this goes on, the worse it is. Fandom and fic writing helped me get back into writing the last time I experienced an issue kind of like this. But it wasn't this...much. It wasn't as intense, and hadn't gone on for as long. I know the answer: write, stupid. But I am really, really struggling with how to make myself just move past the fear and do it. And in the meantime, I am almost crying when I read about how happy writerly friends are, or the strides they are making in their own writing.
This can't continue. I have to do something to move forward. But fandom isn't what it once was, and I don't know if writing fic will give me back my confidence the way it once did. I am sad, and afraid, and I don't know what to do to kick myself in the rear and move forward.